They Fired The Professor for Being Mean

Nobody claimed that organic chemistry would be simple. For a number of students enrolled in Maitland Jones Jr.'s organic chemistry course at New York University in the spring of 2022, however, the course appeared overwhelming. They exchanged complaints, initiated a petition, and rated Jones' teaching poorly. Then NYU chose to terminate his employment.

After the spring semester, 82 of Jones' 350 students signed a petition criticizing his teaching style and the difficulty of his class. They attributed their low performance on Jones's exams to his "condescending and demanding" demeanor.

“We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class,” the petition said, according to The New York Times.

“We urge you to realize that a class with such a high percentage of withdrawals and low grades has failed to make students’ learning and well-being a priority and reflects poorly on the chemistry department as well as the institution as a whole.”

Many of the students who hoped to pursue careers in medicine thought that Jones' organic chemistry class shattered their dreams. However, several students and professors have come to Jones' support.

“You can work your a— off and not get an A in something just because it’s beyond what you can do,” Elizabeth Spiers, a journalism professor at NYU posted on social media, as was reported by the Independent. “That’s not a moral failing, but it should probably tell you you’re not headed in the right direction with medical school." "I think that’s hard for a lot of students to accept.”

Similarly, Ryan Xue, a former student of Jones, supported the professor's teaching method.

“This is a big lecture course, and it also has the reputation of being a weed-out class,” he told The New York Times. “So there are people who will not get the best grades." "Some of the comments might have been very heavily influenced by what grade students have gotten.”

For 84-year-old Jones, a star in the field of organic chemistry who literally wrote a book on the topic, Organic Chemistry, his dismissal has less to do with his teaching approach and more to do with the lack of attention and dedication he has observed in pupils over the previous decade.

“Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate,” he wrote in an email to NYU after his termination, according to The New York Times. After the pandemic, he said, students seemed to lose the ability to study.

“They weren’t coming to class, that’s for sure because I can count the house,” Jones additionally told The New York Times. “They weren’t watching the videos [that I made], and they weren’t able to answer the questions.”

However, NYU has maintained that Jones' dismissal was justifiable.

A representative for NYU told Fox News Digital, "In short, he was hired to teach but was unsuccessful." This class resulted in outcomes that called into question the quality and efficacy of the instruction, despite the fact that NYU offers many difficult courses and has many tough graders on its faculty.

An NYU spokesperson added in a statement to the Independent that Jones' course evaluation scores were by far the worst not only among members of the Chemistry Department but among all the University's undergraduate science courses, and multiple students [complained] about his dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension, and opaqueness about grading.

Jones says he is not unhappy about being dismissed since he had planned to retire soon regardless, but he is concerned about what his dismissal says about higher education.

"I simply want to prevent this from happening to anyone else," he told The New York Times.

And his colleague, NYU chemistry professor Kent Kirshenbaum, highlighted that making specific subjects simpler or catering to students' expectations could have catastrophic consequences for society as a whole.

“Unless you appreciate these transformations at the molecular level [in organic chemistry class]” “I don’t think you can be a good physician, and I don’t want you treating patients.”